What about the damage of increased Islamophobia and violent targeting of Muslims and those erroneously believed to be Muslims stoked by the war on terror?
There are dozens more unquantifiable purported costs and benefits like these. But some things can be measured. The past 20 years of war represent a colossal failure by the US government, one it has not begun to reckon with or atone for. We are now used to the fact that the US government routinely bombs foreign countries with which it is not formally or even informally at war, in the name of killing terrorists. We are used to the fact that the National Security Agency works with companies like Facebook and Google to collect our private information en masse.
We are used to the fact that 39 men are sitting in Guantanamo Bay, almost all detained indefinitely without trial. These realities were not inevitable. They were chosen as part of a policy regime that has done vastly more harm than good.
This means that not all US policy initiatives in the Middle East and North Africa are counted here as part of the war on terror. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq, by contrast, does count as part of the war on terror, for the simple reason that the Bush administration considered it so. The administration argued for and justified the invasion as a necessary measure to prevent terrorist groups from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and striking the United States.
This situation took some time to come about; even after the US invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda was able to maintain an international network of members who went on to carry out massive attacks in Europe, like the March 11, , subway strikes in Madrid and the July 7, , plot in London.
Upstart regional groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were able to operate with even greater impunity within those countries. This is not merely because of successes in the US-led war on terror. ISIS, a group that emerged as a direct result of the war, became a more effective recruiter of young aspiring militants than al-Qaeda , especially in and How much the destruction of al-Qaeda is worth to the US is a matter of perspective.
Those fears were not realized because of the decimation of al-Qaeda and because the group, even at its height, was probably not capable of carrying out an attack like that every year. That amounts to some 60, lives saved to date. Whoa, if true. More clearly relevant in an accounting of the war on terror are the potential benefits that accrued to some civilians. But the prior regimes in those countries were also horrific.
The Taliban has now returned to power, but women in Afghanistan had 20 years free of a theocratic regime , with many able to attend school and university, hold political positions, and generally be more independent of their fathers and husbands. In a survey , the Afghanistan Central Statistics Organization estimated the literacy rate among women ages 15 to 24 at That said, these gains tended to be concentrated in cities like Kabul; many women in more rural regions suffering under repeated American airstrikes, and enjoying fewer gains in liberties, were eager to see the US-backed regime gone.
Health conditions also improved for Afghans during the occupation, with mortality rates for children in particular falling.
A study in The Lancet Global Health found that between and , mortality for children under 5 in Afghanistan fell by 29 percent. Given current birth levels in Afghanistan, that could translate to roughly 44, lives saved annually due to reduced child mortality.
It would be a stretch, however, to give the war on terror sole credit for this; many neighboring countries saw child mortality gains in this period, too, at least in official statistics. Iraq, by contrast, did not see notable gains in child mortality post-invasion.
Their most recent estimates were released on September 1. Instead of building democracy in Iraq, he said, the Americans supported a political class that created networks of corruption and militias that continue to rob the country. Even though it is rich in oil, Iraq suffers chronic blackouts and crumbling infrastructure because of graft, profiteering and mismanagement. Tens of thousands of students graduate each year with no hope of finding jobs.
So, what has changed? Today, Hassoun lives in the same house in Jadriyah, meters yards from the Tigris River. Black and white photos of her husband adorn the walls. Dina, her granddaughter who survived the bombing, is now an year-old student of dentistry. But her neighbor Salman, like many other Iraqis, views the U. Sections U.
Science Technology Business U. The U. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. But what about Iraq? Ambassador Joe Wilson is one who has some reasons and is uniquely qualified to express them.
He was the last US diplomat to meet Saddam before the first Gulf War — as acting ambassador in Baghdad he actively challenged him. Having confronted Saddam, Wilson then went on to challenge his own president little more than a decade later.
A few months earlier, though, Wilson had travelled to Niger at the request of the CIA to investigate the claim, and found it to be false. He was shocked that the Bush administration was using what he knew to be incorrect information as a justification for war. The response was ferocious — not just against Wilson himself.
His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA agent by the administration — a move that put her life in danger, along with that of the many sources she had cultivated in Iraq and other areas. Now the two live with their children and black Labrador dog as far away from Washington as possible while staying in the US.
Years after these events, Wilson still asks that the location is not revealed — though not specifying whether the threat is internal or external. We had a wide-ranging discussion focusing on reasons why Iraq was a target of the Bush administration.
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